The Sorensen Monologues

Archive for March, 2019

Watching New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s response to the terrorist attack against Muslims in Christchurch threw into relief what a real leader of a country looks like. I couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous of my antipodean sistren and brethren. Meanwhile, here in the States, Trump is downplaying the growing threat of white nationalism that he’s helped foment.

I had a bit of an internal debate over the title of this cartoon, because I felt using the first name of a female politician while using the last name of a male one could be seen as tapping into gender preconceptions about authority figures. But in my personal experience, New Zealanders often refer to Jacinda Ardern as “Jacinda” much like Beto O’Rourke is referred to as “Beto.” I had to identify her as being from New Zealand, since many Americans don’t know her name, and “Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand” was getting a bit unwieldy.

I’m declaring it a rule that every cartoonist gets to do one cartoon with made-up Latin names every five years. They are too much fun.

This cartoon is, of course, inspired by recent events surrounding Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who said a couple critical things about U.S.-Israel foreign policy using language that mildly, and possibly inadvertently, evokes anti-Semitic tropes. In a spectacular display of hypocrisy, the GOP has seized on Omar after remaining silent about, and often encouraging, the very real rise of anti-Semitism within their own ranks, most notoriously among the alt-right. (You will recall they literally chanted “Jews will not replace us” at the hate rally in Charlottesville.) So the grandstanding from the likes of Liz Cheney and Jeanine Pirro, who in a stunning display of Islamophobia linked Omar’s hijab to Sharia law, which she declared antithetical to the US Constitution, should not be taken seriously by anyone. These are bad-faith political opportunists, and the media should treat them as such.

I read a depressing Dave Eggers article in the Guardian over the weekend about the recent Trump rally in El Paso, where multiple people are quoted as liking Trump because he’s “strong.” This would be the ultimate triumph of form over content, of personality cult over policy, of perceived “masculinity” over “feminine weakness,” of unhinged belligerent bluster over anything real. So, with this in mind, I tried placing progressive policy ideas in the voice of someone hypermasculine and dumb. Some may think this is similar to the Liberal Redneck, who I’m a fan of, but the Liberal Redneck spouts wisdom in a lovely southern drawl. The character in my cartoon is intended to be more like George W. Bush or Trump, someone who simply acts dumb (or is dumb) to advance a political agenda.